Catapult overpowered?

Discussion in 'Support!' started by Ralith, June 29, 2013.

  1. Ralith

    Ralith Member

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    So far every large team game I've been in has turned into a standoff where each team builds massive spam of catapults and advanced radars, making it impossible to get even a large army close, as they start getting picked off by swarms of cruise missiles the moment they leave the friendly defensive perimeter. Of course, as with anything, it will be harder to spam these once metal spots are working, but as it is they seem to make T2 artillery completely redundant and make every game between skilled players end the same way: in a last-ditch T2 bomber swarm searching for the commander.
  2. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    I just swarmed maybe 10 or so catapults to death with t2 tanks. It is doable. But the catapult surely looks like an unfinished unit to me anyway. I mean currently it is just a replacement for the not always working t2 arty somehow.

    Also games between skilled players end usually with tanks all over the place. Not with catapults.
  3. RMJ

    RMJ Active Member

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    Seems like it.

    But also radars reveal far to much imo, its just insane how much the basic radar is, let alone that advance radar reveals half the planet.

    Hopefully in the future when mountains and canyons come in, those will block radar, so you cant see units behind a mountain or in a canyon.
  4. Ralith

    Ralith Member

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    If they're undefended and not accompanied by a nearby advanced radar, sure, but even just a few token walls or turrets will slow down any force long enough to get picked off. An effective tactic is to just scatter them throughout your base, making yourself impossible to attack with ground forces, because all the base buildings get in the way and prevent you from quickly taking out the launchers.

    And people don't stop at 10.
  5. KNight

    KNight Post Master General

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    Things will change once Metal Points are required for Extractors.

    Mike
  6. cola_colin

    cola_colin Moderator Alumni

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    Those 10 catapult were part of a fully fortified base with towers, t2 tanks, commanders, and other stuff. You just need to build more tanks. Also attack try to attack before they have build a fortress.
  7. liamdawe

    liamdawe Active Member

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    This, remember guys everything seems OP because you have an inexhaustible supply of metal right now.
  8. Iondeath

    Iondeath New Member

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    I'm pretty sure that once a t2 anti missile building is added they will be balanced. Heck you could probably make the current AA towers attempt to target the missiles with a little bit of coding, assuming the missiles have hit points.
  9. mushroomars

    mushroomars Well-Known Member

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    Yeah, in Gentleman's League, it's all about efficiency. Artillery in general is incredibly inefficient, it is usually cheaper to close the distance, and if necessary, set up shorter-ranged base-cracking weapons. T1 Mortars, and T2 Mobile Artillery fill this role properly.

    The only reason to use Long Range artillery is if your enemy has your land forces bottlenecked, with the bottlenecks defended from artillery by Bombers or a mobile naval/land force. Even then, you should have a resource advantage in this case and will be able to overwhelm them with any sort of brute force.
  10. RainbowDashPwny

    RainbowDashPwny Active Member

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    Metal points will change everything.

    As for radars having "too large" of a range remember this is the smallest planet and on the larger ones people will be complaining about not enough radar coverage if Uber were to decrease their range before anyone has played on a larger planet.

    We can't really comment on the balance of everything yet, especially when so many game making features aren't even in yet (orbital layer units, multi-planet battles).
  11. mancora

    mancora Member

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    Considering the large distances, roundness of the planet and such. I could see lazier players setting up catapults with laser tower defenses to do general metal extractor protection, so the player doesn't have to sit there and babysit them.
  12. zGeneral

    zGeneral Member

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    this
  13. arnick

    arnick New Member

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    Except not. The only orbital body that this even comes close to, is moon maps. Sorry, but even the Adv radar doesn't show very large distances on the largest playable planet size. And that's relatively small still compared to how large they said planets will be able to get. You have to litter the planet with adv radars in order to see the whole map. And I'm talking 10 - 20+ of them.
  14. Faijin

    Faijin New Member

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    I think the reason radar feels overpowered to some is because of the smallish maps and close spawns. You'll find half of your enemies within 3 adv radar towers usually. I don't see why that's a problem though.
  15. RainbowDashPwny

    RainbowDashPwny Active Member

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    +1

    People keep forgetting that this is one of the smallest planet sizes and that radius to surface area does not scale linearly. Even adding 50% to the diameter of the planet will increase the play area significantly, by 125% to be specific.
  16. hygieia

    hygieia New Member

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    I think that is just fine and serves as clear boundaries between factions.
    At this point you'd launch into outer space and continue to battle there, trying to either attack the heavily fortified base from the moon or with asteroids OR/AND prevent that from happening to your own heavily fortified base.
  17. jkaplan

    jkaplan New Member

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    Generally speaking I think turrets are too cost effective. This is something I've been noticing for a while, and I think part of the problem is unit pathing. It's hard to judge the effectiveness of units when pathing has so many issues, its getting better and right now I think its getting close to being pretty solid, but I still feel that static defense is too strong for its cost. The biggest issue is probably just catapults and nuke launchers as you guys have said. I think laser turrets are basically fine, and the issue is mostly just AoE. With the low survivability of basically all units int his game, its just too powerful when a catapult can wipe out a huge chunk of levelers. Compare the cost of the catapult itself to the cost of the chunk of levelers... its amazingly cost effective. I think catapults should probably be nerfed significantly and made significantly more expensive.

    Right now the counter to static defense is basically more static defense and i think we can all agree thats not going to make for a very fun game. If it was more expensive to build static defense it wouldn't be easy for players to surround their bases with it and that would allow players to move around it and hit their opponents base from weak points, but with the range and cost of catapults its really not an option right now.
  18. arnick

    arnick New Member

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    Eh, I wouldn't suggest both. One or the other, sure. Both is kind of a kick to the balls, though. Increasing the cost, and perhaps time to make it, yeah. Wouldn't increase cost and lower damage, though. Doesn't make sense. At least, not to me, anyway. v0v
    Last edited: July 3, 2013
  19. RainbowDashPwny

    RainbowDashPwny Active Member

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    +1

    You balance things by tweaking one part at a time, to many tweaks and you just transition something from OP to totally worthless or vice versa.
  20. Raevn

    Raevn Moderator Alumni

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